


All washed up

by Insecuriosity



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Drug trafficking, Gen, Merformers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 23:51:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16418420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insecuriosity/pseuds/Insecuriosity
Summary: Wing works as a volunteer at a marine rescue and rehabilitation centre. The animals they save always seem to be the same four or five species; sea lions, seals, penguins, seagulls, and the occasional pelican.One day, during winter, Wing finds something that doesn't belong on the cold shores of the north sea. Something that brings a world of trouble to the quiet underfunded rescue...





	All washed up

It was a cold and dreary day at the coast. Craggly rocks were sticking out of the sand and grey clouds were hurrying across the sky, as if fleeing from the drab sea. 

Mid winter there was nothing tropical about the coast, let alone one a day like this, but Wing didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world. Especially not when it was finally his turn for beach patrol!

He buried his hands a little deeper into the pockets of his jacket and continued down his path to the Wildlife rescue. It was an ugly little block of cinder and cement, a remnant of the early 90’s with its staple cartoony animal stencils and outdated ‘hip’ patterns plastered all over to smooth out the hard edges.  
The parking lot was big and empty – with only a few cars and the wildlife’s patrol jeep standing on the asphalt. It had gotten to the point where nobody bothered to park inside the lines when it was winter. 

Wing pushed open the front door and headed over to the reception desk, leaning forward and lifting the jeep keys off the hidden little hook with a practised stretch and twist of his hand. 

“Wing?” Ratchet’s warning voice sounded from somewhere in the back.

“Hey Ratchet, good morning!” Wing called back. He pushed some papers and the keyboard aside and pulled open the drawer that held the rescue’s patrol phone. Fully charged. Nice.  
Ratchet said nothing – or, if Wing was guessing correctly, he was mumbling to himself at a distance where Wing couldn’t hear him. Most likely complaints about nobody using the actual reception entrance, even though that was at least a 30 second walk and clearly the inferior way to grab the jeep keys. 

Besides, if Ratchet didn’t want people to lean over the desk, he probably should be sitting there to help people that needed something.

Wing walked back to the jeep and embraced the scent of musty car-interior and sea. It was kept clean decently well, but after such a long life with the rescue patrols the car had picked up a lot of little extra’s. A hint of oil, a smidge of rotten clam, a LOT of air-freshener, dried sea-sand…  
For Wing, it smelled of nostalgia. He loved the sea and everything that came with it, including the sand and the weird smells that stuck to the car. He didn’t regret moving to the coast. 

He started up the jeep and began his patrol route down the coast. This coast in particular was one of the only ones in the country to get the jeep-patrol treatment. It took at least an hour and a half by car to scout all of it, and it allowed for nature to blossom.  
A good distance from where most beach-visitors set up their parasols, there were packs of seals and penguins. Seabirds that nested where the beach stopped and the huge stone cliffs began. 

Wing drove the jeep to the edge of the sea and began scanning the surfline. He didn’t really know what was sadder; the fact that enough animals washed up to warrant a daily patrol, or the fact that there was enough trash at the edge of the water that he frequently had to slow down to check if a plastic bag wasn’t actually an animal.  
This season had already been pretty busy for rescues. There were three seals recovering from having eaten plastic bags, and a seagull who had hopped in with some necrosis on its foot. Also a few of the more land-bound animals that people brought in. Not everyone understood that ‘Marine Wildlife Rescue’ didn’t extend to stray cats and badgers apparently. Funnily enough the actual cat-and-dog shelter at the other side of town had the exact same problems in reverse. 

Wing had fond memories of the time that they had all needed to ride over to collect an irate seal youngster that had been trapped in a dog crate. Ratchet had gotten bitten, they had managed to actually break the dog crate and get yelled at by the owner of said dog crate, and the seal had-

…There was a white tail rising out of the water. 

Wing slammed the brakes, and stared wide-eyed into the distance, at what he had earlier assumed to be a large pile of half-buried plastic trash. The tail slapped down, and Wing startled into action as the entire ball of tangled animal and plastic began floppping against the beachsand like a fish on a line. 

He shifted from the first to the third gear as fast as he could and the jeep spat up sand as he raced towards the emergency. In the time it took to drive over there, Wing broke his mind trying to think of possible creatures that were _that_ big, and white. 

The only animal he could think of was a beluga – or maybe world’s whitest shark? 

He stopped the jeep at a short distance away from the animal and got ready to dial Ratchet back at the center, when a human face suddenly appeared from within the fish-garbage tangle.  
Wing froze where he was sitting and was momentarily thrown back to his first year in college – specifically to the one time he had accidentally eaten space cake and had begun hallucinating for a good few hours. 

Was there actually a _mer_ tangled up in the netting? Th-!... Mers didn’t even live in his hemisphere!! 

As if to further taunt Wing’s sanity, the mer did its best to rear up – opened its mouth, and then screamed; “FUKK YOUH!” 

Wing stood flabbergasted for a moment. He knew that mer could talk if they hung around humans a lot, but he’d always imagined it to be an urban legend. And for it to know _English_ to boot… Either it was a mer species from Australia, or it came from America. Wing couldn’t decide which one sounded more plausible. 

Wing got out of the car and walked around the mer at a safe distance, already fumbling to get out the rescue phone. He was mostly running on autopilot, checking for note-worthy constriction wounds, possible infections, skin issues… He honestly doubted that scarring and mange looked the same on a mer as it did on a seal, but there was nothing else he dared to do. 

“You’re okay.” He said to the mer. “We’re here to help. You’re okay. Do you understand me?”

“Stay off!” The mer hissed. “Go ‘way –I BITE!” 

“I-… I don’t doubt that you do, but I can help?” His only reply was wild snarling, and the mer continuing to try and gnaw itself free. “O-okay. No helping just yet, I’ll … just stay there.”

It didn’t take long before Ratchet picked up the phone, already in ‘rescue mode’.  
“Ratchet here.” Ratchet’s voice said gruffly. “What we got?”

“I found a mer on the beach.” Wing said immediately. “It’s constricted- it’s upset-“ 

“Way! Waaww awWay!!!” The mer screamed and performed an admireable – if not slightly terrifying – flail towards Wing. “RAHH!!” 

“A mer?!” Ratchet sounded more confused than angry, and that was no small feat. “Is that-... who is screaming in the background?”

“Yes a mer. Also, the mer is the one screaming! I don’t know how it got here, I have no idea what to do, and it looks like it’ll kill me if I get anywhere near it.” Wing said truthfully. “I have a jerrycan and some towels to keep it wet but I can’t even tell if that would help it or not. Should I just start trying to keep it moist?”

“No, don’t do anything just yet, just … uh, describe the mer to me-. Actually no, take a picture of the mer and try to goggle or bingle or whatever that website is called-… just find out where the hell that thing is supposed to live! I’m going to grab supplies and get together a team. How big is it?”

“We’ll need more than just two people to carry it into the jeep.” Wing said, and he tossed a look at the back of said jeep. “Um, actually, it might not even fit without some part of it hanging off-“

“Let GO!” The mer screamed in the background. “Leme GO!”

“Out of all the things….” There was a lot of noise on Ratchet’s side of the line, and Wing heard the distinct sound of the medicine cabinet being forcefully yanked open. “…anaesthetic anesthetic -… disinfectant yes… Wing? I’ll bring Aiden along to help carry it, try and convince the mer to co operate if you can. Don’t forget to send me that picture, and don’t come ANYWHERE near it! Half of those tropical mer have some kind of poison on em.”

Wing glanced at the sharp spines that were sticking out from the mer’s back. As he watched, a droplet of thick-looking water rolled down one of them. “Noted…” 

“… whole goddamn reason I started working here instead of Africa…” The phone crackled and went quiet leaving Wing alone with the irate mer struggling in the sand. 

“Oh boy…” He murmured to himself and pulled out his personal phone to take a picture. 

As the camera snapped, the mer had its lips drawn back over its teeth to showcase their length and sharpness. “Asssss-hol.” The mer hissed. 

-

Wing let his head rest against the cold metal of the truck and tried to let it soothe his headache, despite the constant jostling and hobbling of the car. It was barely a few hours into the day, and already he felt ready to roll back into bed.  
The mer and its accompanying tangle had been difficult to manoever into the back of the truck, even after they’d sedated it and gotten it onto the tarp. Until they knew if the mer was venomous or not, everyone had to try and avoid the long sharp spines that were sticking out of the mer’s fins, and it had really decreased the number of handholds they had to move the mer along. 

“You know what kind of mer he is yet?” Ratchet said. He was sitting near the mer in a position that looked distinctly uncomfortable, carefully trying to cut away the tangled nets. 

Wing opened his eyes and looked back at his phone screen. Googling ‘red and white mer’ had not brought up anything useful, and ‘list of mer species’ had just brought him to a liste of latin names and an art website with pictures of imaginary mer.  
“Nothing yet. There’s plenty pictures of colourful mer but they don’t look anything like this guy. Not to mention that most of them are only the size of a toddler, not a beluga.”

“Try looking for the venomous types. Just look for ‘spines on mer’ or something.” Ratchet struggled with his cutters. Wing could barely see the handles sticking out from between the thread and plastic. “Goddamnit why is there metal lining in these nets!?”

Wing left Ratchet to cutting and returned to his phone screen to peer at the pictures the new search had spewed out. There were plenty of mer with spines and pointy bits all over them, but they all looked a lot more camouflaged than their rescue. Sandy brown, rock-structure black, murky-seafloor gray…  
Wing scooted a little closer to the sedated mer, carefully lifted the wet towel that had been put over its head, and held up his phone for reference. Two fins at the side of the face near the jawbone… Two short V-shaped horns at the top of the head … No neck-gills… 

“Synanceia verrucosa…?” Wing squinted at the picture and then back at the mer. The face shape matched, as did the location of fins, spines, and oddly unique horns. But the colour… “Hey Ratchet do you know if mers have the ability to camouflage?”

“I think the octopus kind do. Not sure about the rest, though a lot of mer-fry starts out looking like some weird translucent fishbaby from hell, so if you call ‘growing up’ a form of camouflage I suppose they do.” Ratchet replied.

“This guy looks like he’s supposed to be from the Synanceia verrucose species, but he’s way too colourful. All the pictures I can find of the Sy-something verru are dark brown and sandy, or drab and black.” The noises from Ratchet’s clippers halted, and a moment later Wing’s phone was yanked from his hands. “Hey! Careful, don’t get it wet-!”

Ratchet squinted at the search results, and then at the mer. He switched pages, quickly skimming the information there. Judging by how much deeper the wrinkles on his face got, Wing didn’t think he’d discovered anything good.  
“… What are you seeing Ratchet? What’s the problem?”

“This mer is indeed a Synanceia verrucose. They go through a methamorphosis near the end of their teenage years, where their colours adapt to their surroundings... If my hunch is correct, we’re dealing with someone’s illegal pet, and that would make things about five times more complicated than it already is.”

“Complicated health-wise, or complicated money-wise?” Wing asked. 

Ratchet sighed. “Both. But first, let's get this fish to the centre.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if the ending seemed a little abrupt there. I was having some trouble streamlining things and nothing I tried was working so this is the best I could do :) Hope you enjoyed! I will not make any promises on when the next chapter might come out, and it might be some time... Thank you for reading! I have a blog at insecwrites.tumblr.com!


End file.
